The Avid Learner

	Elite Colleges Report Record Low Acceptance Rates for Class 2010
The Admission to elite colleges continues to get more competitive. The acceptance rates at many schools dropped to single digit record lows: Harvard - 6.92% Stanford - 7.18% Yale - 7.5% Princeton - 8.18% Columbia - 9.16% Brown - 9.30% MIT - 9.69% For more information, please read 2010 Admissions Tally by Jacques Steinberg of New York Times.

Larry Zhang Won First Place at Southern California MATHCOUNTS

Southern California MATHCOUNTS was held on March 20, 2010 at University of California, Irvine. About 150 students from all counties of Southern California participated. Larry Zhang won first place in the written competition with a score of 45 out of 46. Brian Wagner placed second in the countdown competition and Kevin Zhang finished in 12th place.

For a complete list of top 40 students and top 12 teams, please visit 2010 Southern California MATHCOUNTS Results.

24 Avid Students Qualified for 2010 AIME

The American Mathematics Competitions announced 2010 AIME qualifiers. Although this year's competition is one of the hardest over the past 10 years, Avid students continues to perform well with 24 AIME qualifiers. Nine of them are first time qualifiers with Jefferey Qiao, a sixth grader from Eastshore Elementary School in Irvine, being the youngest AIME qualifier in Orange County this year.

The qualifying score is 118.5 for AMC 10 and 88.5 for AMC 12. Nationally, around 100,000 students took AMC10 with 1,830 AIME qualifiers. About 110,000 students took AMC12 with 8,144 AIME qualifiers. The 2010 AIME exam was held on March 18. For a list of local qualifiers and their schools, please visit 2010 AIME Qualifiers.

9 OC Students Advanced to 2010 Physics Olympiad Semifinal

American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) announded 310 semifinalists of the 2010 USA Physics Olympiad competition. Nine students from Orange County made the list:

Jonathan Elzur, Tarbut V'Torah School
Chiju Lee, University High School
Jonathan Li, St. Margaret's Episcopal School
Sam Kim, Aliso Niguel High School
Alexander Ramirez, Troy High School
Simon Wu, University High School
George Xing, University High School
Dai Yang, University High School
Qiuyi Zhang, University High School

For a complete list of the national semifinalists, please visit 2010 U.S. Physics Team.

Avid 6th Graders Tied for First Place at the Online Math League Competition

The 2010 Online Math League competition has been concluded. After three rounds of competition, Avid Academy's 6th graders team tied for the first place in the country. It is the third consecutive year that Avid's 6th graders took home the top honor. The 5th graders team also did well by finishing in the 4th place. The top individuals are:

Benjamin M., 6th Grade
Michelle K., 5th Grade
Calvin B. and Matthew C., 4th Grade
Michelle H., 3rd Grade

For more information, please visits: 2010 Online Math League Results.

I hope you enjoyed the information provided in this newsletter. Thank you for supporting gifted education in Southern California. If you have comments to improve our newsletters or would like to share articles, resources and ideas with our community, please email me at Dr.Li@AvidAcademy.com.

Sincerely,

James Li, Ph.D.

Executive Director
Avid Academy for Gifted Youth